RRR by Heet Patel, Jadah Jacob, Ritanza Abron, Khodi Simelane for Does Going to College Mean Becoming Someone New? by David Kevin

In his essay "Does Going to College Mean Becoming Someone New?" David Kevin argues that college can change who you are and how you think. He explains this by sharing his own struggles as an English major, where he felt pressured to write and think in ways that didn’t feel natural to him. Kevin’s goal is to show how difficult it can be to adjust to college life, in order to help others understand the identity shifts that often come with it. He seems to be speaking to students and educators, creating a connection with those who might have gone through similar challenges.

Even though I haven’t started to attend college yet, reading David Kevin’s essay has made me think about how I might go about doing stuff in college when I start attending. The essay shows how Kevin felt pressured to change who he was to fit into the academic world so he did not fail. This has gotten me thinking about how I would go about college and, how I might have to change my habits or ways of doing work. I can also imagine that it would be no easy task to balance staying true to oneself while also trying to meet new expectations given by the professors. Kevin’s experience has made me more aware of the kinds of struggles that might come with college life, but it has also got me excited about how much I will change for the better.

“Does Going To College Mean Becoming Someone New” by David Kevins shows that college changes how a person would go about something. The author’s struggle at the beginning of his college career with academic writing is seen in the observation that “But the reading and writing college expected of me was not the reading and writing I was prepared to do.”(Kevins 1) This shows the shift from personal to impersonal writing styles required by his college.  I was living on the boundary between academic and home communities, between maintaining my identity and accepting another. (Kevins 2) This further shows that since his time at his college, he had to make some major adjustments to the way he would do things which makes him feel like he is losing his true identity or self. Through these experiences, Kevin shows that college challenges a person’s existing thought processes on whether it is sufficient or not.

Works Cited

Kevin, David. "Does Going to College Mean Becoming Someone New?" [English Comp 1], [2019], pp. [178-184].